Doctor, do you think he'll ever recover from this comma?

How do you spell "comma?"
C-O-M-M-A.
For both types of "commas?"
What do you mean both types? Do you mean a colon?
No. What about for a medical comma?
You mean "coma."
So one "m?"
Yes, to be in a medical coma has just one "m." Also, it's pronounced very differently.

Lip service

Reading a website, I came across the phrase 'lip service'. I ask my two totally awesomely amazing co-workers what it means. They discuss the fact that it means to talk something up; to speak well of something, but also that it also indicates falling short in regards to taking action.

"Hipsters pay plenty of lip service to safety [actually they don't], but they still don't have brakes on their bicycles."

After a few minutes of conversation, I ask the real question:

"So, it's not something dirty, then?"

No. No it's not.

The hardest part...

I've continually found that the most difficult aspect of writing the Polecat blog is avoiding using words like: 'titty', 'tatas', 'dildo', 'cock-'anything, 'homo'. Well, it's hard getting criticized for dancing around these words and they're all pretty much direct quotations or at least hominems. So, in true George Carlin style, I'm using them all here. If you ever need a dirty word for an earlier post and you're not quite sure what word to use, just pick one from above.

You've been Polecatted.

Father is Not Safe for Work

Getting a snack while at work, a particular word comes up (it's not important how). This word is somewhat amusing sounding and so, when it's simply the Polish word for 'father', there's no reason not to repeat it several times at different speeds and intonations... in front of a tour group.

Who knew that the Polish word for 'father' is 'tata'?

Herbs gone wild

"The fish isn't great ; I like the dill though."

An innocent statement, until you have a Polish accent and don't pause quite long enough between the words 'dill' and 'though'. Let's just say that we were sitting at dinner and suddenly three people were strongly unsure how the conversation went from the quality of the food to items which can be purchased at a semi-famous SF store that has nothing to do with Earthquakes. (Here's a hint -- Earthquakes cause vibrations.)

Leadership training takes lots of asses

Polecat is at a leadership training exercise. It's an intense, multi-day event with almost all outside contact cut off. It's important to assess your progress during these events and to assess where you are professionally. It's also important not to pronounce 'assess' and 'asses' the same way.

Walk your lunch...

or, edible pets.

It can be quite a lot of work to bring lunch from one place to another. You have to hold it, your hands aren't free. If you have a drink too, how will you open doors? (You don't open doors for people?! You are a terrible person.) And yet, during lunch time, especially on a nice day, people are often out walking their pets. If only we had edible pets. They would be a sort of living, walking, tofu dog -- the pet would need to be edible without cooking, or you could only go for long walks on very hot days and that would mean that you'd need to live in Texas, which would mean that you'd never eat tofu, unless it was made of meat.

On a related note, I wonder how salamanders taste.

He has his way with animals

Special guest awk moment from 'the French'.

We have recently learned from the French (specifically from Frenchy McFrencherson -- who is, for the record, not at all Irish) that there is a drastic difference between the sentence:

"He has a way with animals." (Animals like him) and
"He has his way with animals." (He likes animals, a lot)

"So, you have genital herpes"

I think it's important to start by thinking about how to frame a topic of conversation. You may say something like: "I have a question about similar sounding terms that seem to be totally unrelated", or "I don't understand why it's called genital heart disease". The latter would quickly pinpoint the misunderstanding and therefore the question that should be posed and the issue to be elucidated. These are both much better ways to start a conversation than turning to the person sitting next to you and saying: "So, you have genital herpes [for the record, very not true]". This is, well, just not the right way to start a question about word meanings and origins.

This brings us to the next point; genital != congenital != genetic. Polecat obviously needs to watch more episodes of House, or ER (omg, that show is still on the air?!), or some other suitable medical drama (maybe Scrubs?).

Time to clarify. Genetic is something that is inherited, through one's genes. Congenital is something that is present at birth (there are Latin work origins and stuff), genital is where no one here has herpes.